Note

This enclosure does not work with ATA drives or drives taller than 9.5mm.

By replacing your optical drive, you can install up to a 1 TB hard drive in this enclosure to increase your available storage space. This drive also is available via Target Disk Mode when connected to another Mac using Firewire.

My Fix

My Advice

My Problem

Optical drive on macmini a1176 wouldn't give up the discs anymore. Found the solution on iFixit which was to drop in a hard drive using their caddy/enclosure and a 2.5" drive I had already.

My Fix

Very smooth and most importantly, it worked the FIRST time. It helps if you've opened older mac minis before and it really helps if you've opened a lot of other computers as well but iFixit's instructions really helped. I couldn't have done it without them. Increased my hard drive capacity from 1.5 tB to 2.0 tB.

My Advice

Advice? Some of the steps in your repair guide were unnecessary. They have you disassembling more than you really need just to get the drive in and out. Also, try to google macmini takeapart. There are other guides out there (OWC's videos are good) that have additional info that you will find useful. Big thanks to iFixit. Good job.

My Problem

Optical drive on macmini a1176 wouldn't give up the discs anymore. Found the solution on iFixit which was to drop in a hard drive using their caddy/enclosure and a 2.5" drive I had already.

My Fix

Very smooth and most importantly, it worked the FIRST time. It helps if you've opened older mac minis before an . . .

My Problem

Broken optical drive on my old machine I don't have the heart to replace with a flashy new model, libraries are wayyy too big for the 160gb original HD and don't use compact disks too often anymore, so decided to add a TB

My Fix

so easy! Doesn't even screw in just sits right where optical drive was.

My Advice

Remember to keep the PATA cable from the optical drive as you do not get a new one! And as always with older MacBooks pre unibody don't mix up the screws as they are different sizes and shapes

My Problem

Broken optical drive on my old machine I don't have the heart to replace with a flashy new model, libraries are wayyy too big for the 160gb original HD and don't use compact disks too often anymore, so decided to add a TB

My Fix

so easy! Doesn't even screw in just sits right where optical drive was.

My Problem

croaked and i wanted to change the boot to SSD. Once you have a computer that boots up quickly you get spoiled.

My Fix

it was a lot more work than I anticipated. But your instructions were good and it actually worked. Finding software to clone the boot drive on 10.5 was no picnic, but the whole thing was kind of a triumph. Thanks for doing what you do

My Advice

This is not a job for the faint of heart. You have to remove the monitor to get to anything. Frankly, although it was a lot of fun and works great, I would not recommend it for the lame reason I had. That being said, happy I did it.

My Problem

This is a project that was kind of dumb to get into. Tearing apart an

old iMac I only use to run my scanner because the optical drive was

croaked and i wanted to change the boot to SSD. Once you have a computer that boots up quickly you get spoiled.

My Fix

My Problem

Running Yosemite, my early 2008 iMac had been reduced to a crawl. It would take minutes to boot and even wake from sleep. Mail took forever to load. iPhoto took even longer. Every app spawned spinning beachballs that seemed to never go away. Streaming audio would too often just stop for no reason. My internet connection was irregular, frequently slowing and disconnecting. And then there were those times my machine would just freeze up and require a reboot.

Oh, and my optical drive was broken.

The fix: I took out the broken DVD drive and put a terabyte SSD in its place in the optical bay. I kept my original spinning drive and am now running the iMac with two drives, using the SSD as my boot drive and the original hard drive as extra storage.

My Fix

Following ifixit's guide, I was able to finish this job in three hours. I assembled all my parts and tools in advance, took some breaks, kept meticulous track of the dozens of screws that come out of this machine (using ifixit's magnet project board), drew diagrams of screw placement, took lots of my own pictures, and stayed calm. Some plugs were a little tough to remove, some screws didn't align properly right away, and initially my machine wouldn't even restart, getting stuck in a boot loop--but I figured out solutions to all these little stumbling blocks (respectively by spudging carefully; unscrewing and trying again; and unplugging all my peripherals, booting to the original drive, resetting my startup drive to the SSD in OS X preferences, and restarting the machine. Good to go after that.)

My iMac is now better than new. It runs super fast, booting in seconds and waking from sleep instantly. Mail and iPhoto open and load in seconds, not minutes. The few spinning beachballs that I do see go away in seconds and don't stick around for hours anymore. Most surprisingly, my cable internet connection has gotten a lot faster and more stable with the SSD, now drawing a steady 120 mbps down when it used to just come down at a stuttery 15-50 mbps. And here I was blaming Comcast for that when my old spinning hard drive was the culprit all along....

The new SSD seems to have fixed every single thing that aggravated me about my old iMac.

My Advice

Originally I thought this was the year I would finally get a new iMac. Then I started reading about people installing SSDs in their old machines, breathing new life into them. My old machine just felt like it was running slower and slower (although some routine disk repair had sped things up a bit). I wanted more speed, I realized, not an entirely new machine. So I bought all the parts for this fix and took the plunge into the hidden guts of my Apple computer (I have previously opened up and upgraded ram and even processors in my laptops so I am familiar with opening up computers, but I have never done a fix as involved as this one before).

For a long time I was leery of pulling the glass off of my iMac and doing this project, but that turns out to be one of the easiest steps of this fix (its really cool how the monitor glass attaches to the iMac, by the way).

You can do this fix if you are the one responsible for doing routine maintenance and troubleshooting on your Mac and if you have ever used a screwdriver to open up an electronic device before--especially a computer--to do an upgrade or your own fix. If you have never opened up an electronic device before and/or if you are unfamiliar with how to set up an iMac (as in basic stuff like knowing when and how to plug in cables and configure the boot drive in system preferences), then you shouldn't take this task on just yet.

However, if you are thinking about doing this and are in fact reading this right now, then I figure you are the kind of person who can swap out an optical drive for an SSD. It's a complicated but ultimately very straightforward process.

I do have some advice:

1. Draw a diagram of where all the screws go, especially in the case assembly; not all iMacs of this vintage have the same kinds of screws and it turned out that my machine used not two but three different lengths of screws just to hold the case together.

2. Take pictures of all parts both before you remove them and after you remove them. The pictures in the ifixit guide are good but it helps to have your own too. This came in especially handy when I had to reattach the heat sensor and foam to my SSD and I had forgotten where those parts initially sat on the old optical drive--fortunately I had a picture of that part before I had pried those pieces off it.

3. Get a bunch of little bowls and post-its or, better yet, use ifixit's magnetic project board to organize all your screws. There are a lot of them!

4. Read all the comments on the ifixit repair guide, especially when you get to removing the LCD panel. Don't pull the cable off the circuit board as suggested in the guide; do what the comments say and pull the plug off the back of the LCD panel--or just prop it up if possible or have someone hold it and work under it so you don't have to complete this tricky step at all.

5. Stay calm, take your time, and be meticulous. In some blogs I follow, I read that this fix took under an hour. It took me a lot longer, but that's because I took several breaks and documented my repair with my own diagrams and pictures. I found this fix to be a little tense and even sweaty, frankly, as it involves a lot of concentration and even a small degree of lifting (the iMac is not light)--I kept a towel handy so I didn't drip sweat onto a circuit board.

6. Make sure you have a magnetic-tipped screwdriver so you can retrieve the teeny little screws you will drop into the guts of the Mac. I dropped two :p .

7. Clean the LCD panel and glass (front and back) carefully because they will get covered with fingerprints and worse. I had to take the glass off my iMac after I had it all reassembled because I didn't clean the glass thoroughly the first time. It's funny how easy that felt after doing this fix.

To conclude my tale, I had saved up for a new iMac, but instead of buying the new 5K machine I chose to spend about $600 on parts to upgrade my old one and keep the rest of my money (and spend some of it on really nice headphones and a headphone amp, yes!...). I thought I wanted a Retina display but it turns out what I really wanted was an SSD, and now that I have that I plan to use this machine for as long as I can.

If you are even thinking about doing this fix then just go and do it. Don't wait any longer. And don't buy a new machine. You will be so happy with your old iMac once you get an SSD into it. Plus, this is probably the last time you will be able to do a hack like this on a Mac as the new ones don't let you swap out components like these old ones do.

ps,

8. Ha, one more piece of advice. Put 6 gigs of ram in your machine. Apple claims the early 2008 iMac can take only 4 gig of ram but it really can take 6. OWC sells an upgrade kit: put 4 gig in one slot and 2 in the other.

My Problem

Running Yosemite, my early 2008 iMac had been reduced to a crawl. It would take minutes to boot and even wake from sleep. Mail took forever to load. iPhoto took even longer. Every app spawned spinning beachballs that seemed to never go away. Streaming audio would too often just stop for no reason. M . . .

My Problem

Received a 24" 2008 iMac (2GB RAM, 2.8 duo-core) hand-me-down that had potential, but was slow and had a smaller internal HDD. I'm unfamiliar with Mac's, but I also had an unused 120GB SSD laying around and figured I would tinker to learn Mac.

My Fix

I decided to kill two birds with one stone and swap the main drive (startup disk), add the dual drive bay and upgrade tthe RAM for a major boost in performance. Note that although the Apple website says this iMac will max out with 4GB of RAM, it will accept 6GB. I found 6GB of DDR2 memory on eBay (one 4GB chip and one 2GB chip) for $89.

Overall, this was a very straightforward project and took me an hour, start to finish. I had the Phillips screwdriver, Torx T-8 and T-10, but had to order the T-6, Spudger, and suction cups wit the drive enclosure from iFixit. I laid out a towel on my kitchen table for a soft work surface and followed the directions on my iPad. Note: you should not install a drive in this enclosure that is bigger than 1TB. I think this has to do with either the OS not reading it or the nature of a PATA connection. Either way, follow the directions and you won't be disappointed. I installed a 1TB 2.5" HDD in place of the optical drive, and a 120GB SSD in place of the original start-up disc. (I found the 1TB hard drive on Amazon for $82 and it was cheaper to buy it in an external enclosure, than a bare drive). DOn't waste money on a 7,200 RPM drive for the internal, it is limited in speed by the PATA connection, but still faster than a typical USB 2.0

Before installing, I clean installed OSX 10.10 and all applications on the SSD. Note: you will need to double-stick tape the 2.5" SSD into the inside of the iMac case or customize a bracket for the SSD to fit in place of the standard 3.5" drive.

Once everything was buttoned up, I started the machine and formatted the 1TB storage drive, then aliased all of my storage folders (pictures, movies, music) to the storage drive. Check out this site for more info on that. http://mattgemmell.com/using-os-x-with-a...

Finally, I transferred my photos, documents, etc to the storage drive and it works.

My Advice

These older iMac's are totally fine for regular PC use like: internet, office work, photo editing, etc.. Increasing the internal storage, updating the RAM and converting to an SSD added a few years to its life and makes it very fast to use. For the price, you won't regret it! One other benefit of this dual drive configuration is it free's up an external port and looks cleaner.

My Problem

Received a 24" 2008 iMac (2GB RAM, 2.8 duo-core) hand-me-down that had potential, but was slow and had a smaller internal HDD. I'm unfamiliar with Mac's, but I also had an unused 120GB SSD laying around and figured I would tinker to learn Mac.

My Fix

My Problem

There was really no problem. Just decided to buy an old 17" macbook pro and see what could be done with it. I wound up with an early 2008 from ebay - really cheap. It already had an SSD installed in place of the original HDD. I upgraded the RAM to the maximum of 6 GB and bought a 1 Tb HDD. You were the only outfit that sold an adapter for this model.

My Fix

It was a big fat nothing. Followed the instructions - no problems until it came time to close the case. Adapter must be marginally bigger than original drive because corner of case would not close. Inspection indicated that there was a piece of black plastic trim covering the inside of the slot hole that was removable. I removed it and the case closed fine. I followed Apple's instructions and upgraded the operating system to Yosemite.

My Advice

Well, yeh. I did this for fun and to see how difficult it is to upgrade an older computer. It was a learning experience in preparation for doing it to a later model 17". Only now, I don't need a later model. Nothing I do requires more than 6GB RAM, old thing is blazing fast, have storage to beat the band. So all I can say is - don't do this if you want a newer computer. You'll have given up every reason for getting one. And you'll love your old 2008 bomb that is no longer a boat anchor.

My Problem

There was really no problem. Just decided to buy an old 17" macbook pro and see what could be done with it. I wound up with an early 2008 from ebay - really cheap. It already had an SSD installed in place of the original HDD. I upgraded the RAM to the maximum of 6 GB and bought a 1 Tb HDD. You . . .

My Problem

I had replaced the stock HDD on A1261 Macbook Pro 4,1 with an SSD. While this was better, I did not have enough storage. For that reason I installed a platter drive in the superdrive space and created a "Fusion Drive." Now I have 1.25 TB of storage that really screams.

My Fix

It was easy, but I have experience in going in on MacBooks. The part fit exactly and required no refitting.

My Advice

If you have an old MBP and want to combine better speed and more storage, give it a try.

My Problem

I had replaced the stock HDD on A1261 Macbook Pro 4,1 with an SSD. While this was better, I did not have enough storage. For that reason I installed a platter drive in the superdrive space and created a "Fusion Drive." Now I have 1.25 TB of storage that really screams.

My Fix

My Problem

He was having issues with his mac being very slow and was running an older OS.

My Fix

I replaced the original 3.5 hdd with a 2.5 ssd and used a hdd adapter. I also installed an optical drive to hdd adapter sold by ifixit and placed a 500gb hdd here. The reason I swapped the two is on this iMac the optical drive is a pata connection (very slow) and the original drive is a sata connection ( very fast). Last I installed 4gb of ram. This machine is now running mavericks OS and is extremely fast. Start to finish was about 3 hours including os download reinstall and data transfer.

My Advice

The best advice to you is do all of your research first. Make sure you read everything before you buy. They will tell you everything on the ifixit.com but you call them if you have questions (very cool people). Also pay attention to each step on teardown, don't get ahead of yourself and you will be fine. Macs are so easy to work on especially when they give you step by step pictures. Ifixit has most everything you need to get the job done but there might be something they don't offer (3.5 to 2.5 hdd adapter).

My Problem

He was having issues with his mac being very slow and was running an older OS.

My Fix

I replaced the original 3.5 hdd with a 2.5 ssd and used a hdd adapter. I also installed an optical drive to hdd adapter sold by ifixit and placed a 500gb hdd here. The reason I swapped the two is on this iMac the optical d . . .

My Problem

My old hhd was failing, so instead of just replacing it, I decided to upgrade to a fusion drive.

My Fix

For best results with a fusion drive, the hhd should go in the optical drive enclosure and the ssd should go where the original hdd was. This meant using a 2.5" to 3.5" SATA adapter to hold the drive in place.

My Advice

I followed the advice of some recent fusion drive upgrades of preserving the recovery partition on the ssd (google fusion drive with recovery partition for more info) and everything appears to be working great. I haven't tested the recovery partition yet, so I'm not sure that it will show up during boot. Also, I managed to get both the hdd thermal sensor and the optical drive sensor to reach to the new hdd in the optical bay. It seems to be working great and the fans run very infrequently. If you attach the sensor to the ssd, I've read that it will read out of range on the cool side and cause the system to assume the sensor is faulty and run the fans continually.

My Problem

My old hhd was failing, so instead of just replacing it, I decided to upgrade to a fusion drive.

My Fix

For best results with a fusion drive, the hhd should go in the optical drive enclosure and the ssd should go where the original hdd was. This meant using a 2.5" to 3.5" SATA adapter to hold the drive in . . .

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Join the cause and tell your state representative to support Right to Repair. Tell them you believe repair should be fair, affordable, and accessible. Stand up for your right to repair!